


Her Fading Laughter

by Damn_Son



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bloopers at the end!, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, F/F, Hello symbolism my old friend, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, Loneliness, Pirates are their own warning, Violence, metaphors and shit, mild PTSD, poetic bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:46:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23774794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damn_Son/pseuds/Damn_Son
Summary: Her smile was like fading laughter;haunting,as if I’d loved heronce in a dream.And then like a dream,she was gone,but with me still,that fading laughter.- Atticus---She used to love the ocean, and dream of a better future. Now all she has are nightmares and Her haunting laughter.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Mermaid, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Let's Create Spring Madness 2020





	Her Fading Laughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivalavidapasta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivalavidapasta/gifts).



> Written while listening to this music:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SynzKC4fWp0

In this world, dreams were like glass.

So pretty and fragile, as precious as fine-cut gemstones that managed to reflect hope and light and amplify it a thousandfold.

But just like glass, they were easily shattered. And just like gemstones, they were easily stolen away.

There was no place for dreams in this world. Even children had to learn at an early age to abandon their precious gems and sparkling fantasies for the harsh reality around them.

If dreams were like glass, then the world around them, with all its smoke and blood and rotting corpses, was all shattered edges and sharp glass shards. You could either become like it, or get cut on its serrated corners.

  


She had always been considered a queer child. Even before she’d started dreaming, people always found something wrong with her.

Too pale. Too tan.

Too plump. Too skinny.

Not right in the head. Not demure enough.

Too clumsy. Too stupid.

Maybe that was why she’d started dreaming in the first place. In her dreams, there was never anything wrong with her. In her dreams, she had a family, and siblings, and a home. In her dreams, the streets were never filled with blood and gore and pickpockets and women of ill-repute.

In her dreams, she was never lonely.

And so, she hoarded her dreams and fantasies like coins in a jar. She hoarded them and plucked them out when necessary; they were hers to use, to polish, to perfect.

Because in a world of gore and cuts and shattered glass shards, her dreams were all she had.

Her dreams, and the ocean.

  


She lived in a seaside town. All her life, she’d grown up with the sound of the waves, with the smell of the sea and the cries of the gulls in the sky. She’d grown up watching the fishermen tend to their nets and the sailors carrying cargo and passengers on giant wooden vessels, and the carpenters repairing various holes on the ships. 

To her, the sea was synonymous with life and prosperity. The sea was her whole life, and the town was her whole world. 

Her little town had seemed so vast back then, with its beach shore and its rocky cliffside and its infinite winding alleyways. In a way, it had felt like her town was the only thing alive in the whole universe, surrounded only by the sea and the sky and the vast northern plains. And in this boundless world of hers, her only refuge was a small alcove.

The alcove itself was located at the bottom of the town’s rocky cliff. To reach it, you had to climb down the cliffside until you reached a small protrusion that led directly into the cave. Despite being at the bottom, the tide never got high enough to reach inside the alcove, always stopping at the edge, and only letting in a bit of sea spray and random splashes when the sea was particularly stormy. 

In a way, her alcove was her home within a home. It was the place where she could store all her little collection of seashells and glass bottles without having to worry about them being thrown out, it was the place where she could hoard small pouches of money without having to worry about them being stolen. It was the place where she was free to look at the sea and dream, without having to worry about people judging or ridiculing her for it. And in the autumn, when the storms hit, she would watch, hidden in her little alcove, as the rain and wind washed everything away. Sometimes she wondered if she too would end up being washed away by the rain. Like a leaf blowing in the stormy wind, who would ever notice if she was gone? Who would ever remember her name?

Maybe, in the end, she would simply end up fading away, just like a drop of rain in the ocean.

  


She’d always enjoyed gathering seashells.

When she had the time, when the hunger clawing at her stomach wasn’t too noticeable and she was feeling healthy enough to brave the seaside wind, she would head down to the beach and gather seashells like coins in one of her many pouches.

It was during one of those outings that she first met Her.

The first time she came across Her, she was struck by how beautiful Her eyes looked.

They were clear and otherworldly, like two sparkling aquamarine gems embedded in alabaster skin. She was mesmerized.

At first she mistook Her for an ivory statue stuck between the rocky outcroppings in the sea because of how beautiful She looked. But then, when their eyes locked, Her lips spread in a slow sensual smile. That’s when she knew She was real. Real and alive.

Slowly, carefully, She rose out of the water and placed Herself on the boulder to Her right, thus revealing Her long shimmering mermaid tail.

_Hello, little seashell._

Her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Gulping, she took a step back, unsure. The rocky outcropping She was laying on suddenly felt too close, the space between them too intimate. The mermaid’s gemstones eyes shone with amusement and some other unnamed emotion as She watched her every movement, her every hesitation.

_Will you play with me, little seashell?_

She ran.

  


After that first meeting, whenever she would walk along the beach to gather seashells, She would always appear and greet her the same way.

_Hello, little seashell._

She never appeared when other people were around. And when She _did_ appear, She wouldn’t always try to talk to her, seemingly content to simply watch her from Her perch on the seaside rocks.

And Her eyes always shone, shone with amused and another emotion she could never quite put her finger on.

At first, she was wary.

Everyone knew that mermaids and sirens were devil-kin, and would often wait for the best opportunity to snatch people away from the land to drown them and eat them.

But the more time she spent around Her, the more comfortable she became with Her presence. After a while, she even managed to gather the courage to hesitantly greet Her back. Her delighted laughter tinkled in response. 

Still, she was wary, and made sure to never approcher Her, no matter what.

(No matter how much she wanted to run her hand along Her shimmering scales, as pretty as a thousand radiant dreams.)

  


The sounds of the ocean surrounded her. The smell of salt and fish assaulted her nose. From the corner of her eye, she could see small crabs scuttling away as she shifted and took out a small rag.

The rocks beneath her were wet and uncomfortable, but she didn’t mind.

Her little alcove was dark, only illuminated by the thin shafts of light peeking through the cloudy sky. In front of her were all her little dreams, all her little treasures, laid out in all of their sparkling glory. She continuously polished them with her rag, making sure they were always pristine, always spotless. 

She’d always thought there was a sort of calming comfort to be found in paying attention to the details. In cleaning the small nooks and crannies of a house, and in polishing the cracks of her little treasures. Maybe it was because she herself was considered a small detail in many people’s lives; something that was constantly there but that no one really ever noticed, like the soft whispers of the wind. Maybe she just wished to polish and treasure a small part of her life, even though no one treasured her.

A light rain drizzled outside, masking the sounds of the nearby town. The way it washed away all sounds made it seem like the rest of the world had ceased existing. It made it seem like she was the only person alive in the whole wide world.

She dropped the little shell she was polishing and it _clinked_ as it fell onto her small pile of other treasures, sending all of them tumbling down with the same soft _clink, clink, clink_. The sound echoed throughout her small cave, amplified, and morphed into a crystalline, pristine chime, until she eventually realized it wasn’t coming from her scattered pile of treasures anymore.

Startled, she turned around towards the entrance of the alcove.

There She was, leaning against the edge of her little cave, half of Her body submerged in water, watching her and laughing softly.

_What pretty little treasures you have._

She sat there, frozen, her heart hammering in her chest. The mermaid had never been this close to her before.

(Nobody had ever called her treasures _pretty_ before.)

How long did she sit there, afraid and uncertain, watching Her every movement and anticipating an attack? At what point did she start to relax and lower her guard around the mermaid?

Maybe it was because she’d spent so much time in Her presence before, because She’d never actually tried to harm her before, simply content in watching her collect her seashells.

Maybe it was Her eyes, Her pretty gemstone eyes, that drew her in and made her want to approach Her.

Looking at them felt like looking into the deep old well located on the outskirts of the town; they were both places so full of ancient secrets and unknowns that seemed to greedily drink in and capture the human world around them. But while the old well was full of darkness, Her eyes shone with a strange and beautiful inner light.

It didn’t make Her seem like a devil at all.

Before long, she found herself slowly approaching the mermaid, closer and closer, until she was within arm’s reach of Her.

It felt like time had stopped. Like the world itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what she would do, what they would both do. The mermaid Herself was still looking at her with an open, amused, unreadable expression.

She gulped and slowly, carefully, reached out her hand and gently pressed her fingertips on the ivory skin of Her cheeks. The mermaid’s eyes fluttered closed.

For a single second, everything was perfect. She simply sat there, her arm reached out, her fingertips pressed on the mermaid impossibly soft skin, simply marveling at Her beauty and otherworldliness.

Outside, the rain kept steadily falling down, filling the cave with the calming scent of petrichor.

Then, Her eyes snapped open.

It all happened in a split-second. One moment she was sitting inside her alcove, safe and calm. The next she was underwater, panicking because of the lack of air.

The mermaid’s hands were gripping her arms painfully tight, holding her underwater as she trashed and screamed. Her face stared at her closely, and she saw her panicked expression trapped within those beautiful, deadly eyes of Hers.

She kept screaming and fighting Her grip, even as black spots started to dot her vision, hoping someone would see her from the top of the cliff and come help her.

But, deep down, she knew nobody would come for her.

The rain had washed away her presence, just like it did everything else.

The mermaid leaned in closer to her face, their noses almost brushing together.

In a split-second decision, fueled by desperation, she reared her head back and bit Her in the neck, drawing blood. 

The mermaid _screamed_. Her grip loosened.

The scream seemed to pierce through her very being, making her head pound painfully. But still, she shook Her hands off and swam as fast as she could to the water’s surface.

Her head breached the water, and she drew in a lungful of air, before immediately swimming towards the cliffside. She didn’t even bother going back to her alcove to gather her treasures, terrified of what might happen if She caught her again.

Her nails scraped painfully against the rocks as she pulled herself out of the water, shivering in cold and in fear.

Behind her, she could hear the water splashing agitatedly. Something brushed on the soles of her feet, but she climbed out of its reach before it could grab her. The wind and rain battered her already tired body.

Wails and cries broke out behind her, but she didn’t look back and she didn’t stop climbing.

No matter what she heard or how tired she was, she didn’t stop climbing until she reached the top of the cliff.

****

****

She didn’t go back. No matter how much people sneered at her, mocked her, ridiculed her, no matter how much abuse and suffering she endured, she never went back to her alcove, and she never went back to the beach, trying instead to satisfy herself with the shells and rocks and treasures she already had stored in a corner of her home.

What if she went to the beach, to the alcove, and She was there, waiting for her?

What if She tried to drag her down into the depths again?

That was the precise moment she started fearing the sea. Its vastness was not a source of comfort anymore, but a curse, a source of anxiety and fear.

She wished she’d never approached Her.

  


Fire. Fire roared all around her, mixing in with the screams of people and the smell of burning flesh.

She couldn’t move. Her leg disappeared under a pile of splintered wood.

It burned. It _burned_.

She wanted to scream, but her voice was silent, too drowned out by the screams of others to be properly heard.

Like a drop of rain in the ocean.

Her little treasures were lying in front of her. Broken. Scattered. Shattered.

And that little girl - Lydia, that was her name, _little Lydia_ \- she was lying in front of her too. Her head broken. Shattered. Split open like an overripe fruit, with eyes as glassy and reflective as the gem shards of her little treasures.

Outside, the raiders’ shouts were loud and grating and swept everything away.

She looked at little Lydia, and at her leg, and at her treasures. Throat raw, and tears streaming down her face.

And she screamed.

And she screamed.

And she _screamed_.

The door smashed open.

One of the pirates walked in.

He looked at her, and smiled a smile full of rotting teeth.

  


As the pirates hauled her on their ship, she tried to imagine her pretty little alcove, her safe-space, again.

She tried to hold on to her dreams, and her hopes; she imagined storing them away once again, far far away, in a place where no one could touch them.

She hated the feeling of the pirates’ hands on her skin, and so she tried to imagine them away. Tried to imagine that she was back in her safe little alcove, alone and protected from the rest of the world.

But her little alcove wasn’t so safe anymore.

The mermaid’s laughter echoed across the walls and pierced her fragile eardrums. 

And the tide eventually came, flooding her alcove; shattering rocks and dreams, ripping away cloth and skin.

And in the end, all she had left was a broken body and fractured dreams at her feet.

In the end, she too, ended up just like shattered glass.

  


\---

  


It’s been a long time since that fateful night, and she’s grown.

She still has the scars from back then; scratches and grooves on her skin, and a limp that occasionally makes her stumble and fall.

The pirates took away her dreams, her past life, but they also ended up clothing and feeding her.

And in the end she became an unofficial member of the crew; scrubbing the deck, working the sails, cooking a few meals in the galley.

She doesn’t really know what to call the relationship they have.

They’re not friends. 

They’re not family.

(She’s never had a family.)

_Allies_ is probably the closest term she can find, and even then, at times she’s not even sure how much weight it holds.

The crew don’t touch her. Not anymore.

They know she belongs to the captain.

It used to bother her. She used to pray, and hope, and dream, for something to take her far, far away from there and back to her little alcove.

But now? Now she doesn’t care anymore.

She sees the way the crew look at her sometimes, and she knows what those looks mean.

And still, she doesn’t care.

  


There are times when the captain gives her gifts, even though she never asks for any of them. Maybe it’s _because_ she never asks for anything that the captain keeps giving her things. She’s not sure; she’s never tried to find out.

There only one thing she asks for, and it never changes:

“Please, don’t let me fall asleep.”

She used to love to dream as a child. But now, everytime she closes her eyes, all she can picture is roaring fire, piercing screams, shattered pieces of glass at her feet and a haunting laughter that echoes, echoes, _echoes_ in her head like the chime of a church bell.

She doesn’t want to dream anymore. And so, at night, she always asks the captain to give her work, to put her on the evening watch, to keep her occupied. She’s sure the rest of the crew must think her daft. She doesn’t care.

Sometimes, when she’s so tired she can barely keep her eyes open, she swears she can hear Her laughter floating in the wind. Whenever that happens, she knows for sure she won’t sleep at night, no matter how tired she feels.

She wishes she could go back to her little alcove in the cliff, where all that mattered were her tiny seashells and her pretty crystallized dreams.

  


The sound of cannonfire is what wakes her. 

The echoing laughter in her nightmares drifts off.

She jerks out of bed, still in her nightgown, and quickly rushes out of the captain’s cabin.

Outside, it’s bedlam. Decris lies scattered on deck, and the main mast looks dangerously worn already. The pirates are running around in organized chaos, getting ready for battle, while the captain is shouting orders at the helm. 

“The bilge rats be trying to down our mainmast! Set a course hard to starboard, and when she gives chase we’ll come about and bring a spring upon her cable!”

She stumbles forward and leans on the quarterdeck’s railing to get a better view of the situation.

There, on the port side, is a navy ship made ready for battle.

Hearing the door to the cabin creak open, the captain glances back at her before snapping his attention back to his crew. Still, he adresses her:

“Wench! Back into the cabin with ye! I’ll not have ye-”

Cannonfire sounds again, and she barely has time to see the captain curse and duck before the deck explodes to her left.

  


Pain.

  


Her ears ring.

  


Where is-

  


_Splash!_

Cold water hits her skin and she gasps in surprised pain, before choking on seawater. She shuts her eyes in fear.

She feels herself sinks to the bottom, and desperately flails around in fear.

But she was always afraid of the sea, and she never learned how to swim.

And her waterlogged nightgown feels so _heavy_.

She can’t breathe.

She can’t focus. 

The water bearing down on her, constricting her, feels just like…

_Hello, little seashell._

She’s losing herself in the memories now. And she feels herself fading, fading, _fading_ …

She feels like she’s drowning in fear just as much as she’s drowning in water.

Something wraps around her. Smooth palms gently take a hold of her arms.

_It seems like you’ve gotten yourself in trouble again, hmm?_

Her eyes snap open. The saltwater stings as she gazes at the blurry figure in front of her.

She freezes.

It’s _Her_. The mermaid.

She looks slightly different now, with longer hair and slightly-worn scales. A scar mars the side of Her neck; proof of the first time She tried to drown her and failed.

She’s still beautiful.

The realization washes over her with a painful sort of clarity.

She’s not losing herself in her memories. She’s not dreaming, or hallucinating.

It’s all real. She’s real.

And yet, even as black spots begin to dance in her vision and her lungs painfully scream for air, this time she can’t bring herself to fight back.

She can’t bring herself to care.

She closes her eyes, accepting and weary.

The mermaid shifts and pulls her closer, burying one of Her hands in her hair and tenderly massaging her scalp.

She opens her eyes again, confused.

What-

Before she can finish that thought, She leans in and softly presses Her lips against hers.

Her heart skips a beat.

The mermaid gently sets the pace, tenderly moving against her lips, but never truly forcing Herself on her.

Something warm coils tight in her belly.

She relaxes and shily reciprocates the kiss, even as her consciousness begins to fade.

She’d expected her death to be much less peaceful than this.

As she thinks that, the warmth her belly starts to spread to her limbs, her hands, the tips of her toes, the top of her head.

And suddenly… 

She can breathe again.

The mermaid pulls back and smiles, softly.

She inhales sharply as she realizes she can see Her clearly now. She can see _everything_ clearly now. The sandy ocean bottom, the debris floating around her, the fish darting to and fro. The ocean surrounding her looks straight out of a dream.

The mermaid laughs softly at her wonder, and the sound of her laughter doesn’t sound so haunting anymore.

She cups her cheek with one hand.

_Welcome home, little treasure._

Oh.

_Oh_.

Her throat tightens with emotion as she suddenly realizes what the emotion shining in Her eyes was all along.

_Affection_. 

Just like she used to look at her little seashells, her little treasures with fondness, so did the mermaid look at her with love and affection.

She didn’t know. She _couldn’t_ know.

How could she recognize an emotion, how could she recognise _fondness_ , when nobody had ever looked at her like that before?

And so, for the first time in years she smiles back, filled to the brim with happiness and hope. She wraps her arms around the mermaid and pulls her close to her.

_I’m home._

And like a drop of rain in the ocean, she’s forgotten by the world above.

But in the end, she finds that she doesn’t mind it too much. Because she’s accompanied by all the other drops of rain that make up the world under the ocean.

Her new family.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Bloopers!**  
>  Little snippets and brain farts I wrote during a Fifty-Headed Hydra that didn't make it in because they didn't fit the story. Nothing is edited. Enjoy!
> 
> \---  
> Slowly, carefully, She rose out of the water and placed Herself on the boulder to Her right, thus revealing Her long shimmering COCK  
> \---  
> She was polishing and polishing and in her little cave that was her whole world she felt like she was the only one that existed. Laughter tinkled around her and oh shit, there wqas somether with her?? She turned around panicked because tnobody was supposed to know where her cave thingw as and there was mermaid girl! Mermaid Girl looked amused at the edge of her alcove  
> What pretty little treasures you have  
> And she panicked because the treasures were hers and mermaid girl was not supposed to be here.  
> But eventually she said ‘fuck it’ because nobody has actually ever seen a mermaid before, right? So maybe they’re not so bad after all and mermaid girl is just creepy because she’s a weird mermaid girl  
> And so she reached out to touch mermaid girl and oh shit mermaid grabbed her shocked pikachu face and she was thrwn in the water and she can’t breathe because she’s not a mermaid  
> Mermais girl smiles and laughs and wants to play wth her except she cant fuckign breathe and dying doesn’t sound like a fun game at all. Plz hekp and let me go holy shit  
> Scratch mermaid girl and yeet herself out of the water like a hydrophobe before running out of her alcove and climbing the cliffside like a Grookey to gtfo  
> \---  
> the capatin  
> \---  
> the cpatin  
> \---  
> oh damn mamaid girl is really here  
> \---  
> and her lungs painfully scream for hair.  
> \---  
> mermaid girl is actually here to help and gives her a smooch and she can breathe because air and magic and shit and I have to come up with an excuse to justify this plot point fml  
> \---  
> mermaid girl is really shiny and shit  
> \---  
> the memotion in mermaid girl’s eyes is fondness and loves and affection


End file.
